1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system, an output management method, and a program product allowing a user to send an output request to an image forming apparatus from a PC (Personal Computer) via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, print data sent to an image forming apparatus from a user's PC (Personal Computer) or the like is interpreted and developed into an image by using PDL (Page Description Language), and then printed by using a printer engine. However, the print data described in a PDL incompatible with the image forming apparatus cannot be interpreted at the image forming apparatus and thereby cannot be printed. In order to address this inconvenience, there is known a technology in which a plurality of PDLs are loaded onto the image forming apparatus and the plurality of PDLs are switched for print data to be printed.
On the other hand, there is known a technology for printing print data via a print server from a PC or the like. In this technology, a user sends the print data to the print server. The print server determines a PDL compatible with the print data and then sends the print data to an image forming apparatus compatible with this PDL loaded thereto. In this technology, the user can send a print request without caring which PDL is compatible with the image forming apparatus.
For example, there is disclosed a technology of printer system for assigning print data having PDL information requested by a user to an appropriate printer device (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-278386).
Specifically, a user sends a print data via network to a print server knowing which PDL is loaded onto an image forming apparatus. Once received the print data, the print server determines an image forming apparatus which is not operated and is compatible with the PDL capable of printing the print data (i.e. the PDL is loaded onto the image forming apparatus), and then sends the print data to the determined image forming apparatus. The print server sends to the user the information of the image forming apparatus to which the print data is sent.
Also, the print system according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-278386 can manage each image forming apparatus including PDL information which is newly set to the print server, in order for the image forming apparatus to inform the print server a fact that the PDL is changed, when the user sets a new PDL information.
In the print system according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-278386, an amount of memory usage of the image forming apparatus increases, since a plurality of PDLs are loaded onto the image forming apparatus. Furthermore, since the plurality of PDLs are loaded onto each image forming apparatus, the required time and effort to update PDLs is quite long and large. Furthermore, when the printing is performed by using the print server disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-278386, the user cannot designate the image information apparatus to be used for the printing.